


Peregrine

by ialessan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Modern Guy in Thedas, Multi, Tags to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:50:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ialessan/pseuds/ialessan
Summary: Dragon Age: Inquisition, except the Inquisitor is an accountant from a terrifying alternate universe.Ingredients include roving bands of Spirit Healers, rudimentary motors, and a veritable symphony of disgusted noises.Yeah, this is that fic where the MGiT is a cynical Middle-Eastern bean counter. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.





	1. Exit/Entry

Sayid’s head was spinning.

His bags were on the ground in front of him. One of them had somehow torn along one side, spilling papers onto the pavement. His first concern was for his notebook, however, but when he crawled forward to retrieve it his knee screamed.

He looked down to see a torn trouser knee wet with blood. God _damn_ it. He could deal with that later.

Careful to keep the bloody knee off the ground, he moved towards his bags. He pulled out his notebook and stabbed the power button, intense relief flooding him when the start-up chime sounded. He shut it and stuffed it back into the bag.

This had been happening more often of late, this _falling_. He’d been terribly embarrassed the first time, of course, but nobody’d so much as noticed him, and he’d been able to gather himself at his own pace. It was much better that way.

Had anybody noticed this time?

Sayid looked around and spotted nothing out of the ordinary. Except – it _had_ darkened quite quickly for a city night. The sky was blacker than he’d ever seen it, impossibly black for all the lights that were still on. It felt like a massive hole above his head, a giant pit he could fall in. It unnerved him.

Outside of that, everything was normal. The roads were as busy as they’d ever been, cars and buses going past him in streaks of light, their passengers dark silhouettes. Pedestrians moved up and down the pavement, stepping around him, giving him space. Perhaps it time he moved, too. His head wasn’t spinning quite so badly now.

He pushed the fallen papers into the other bag, mended the tear with a stapler, and pulled himself standing. His knee wasn’t doing too badly for all it looked like he’d busted it, though it _was_ beginning to stain his socks. How did one even get blood out of socks? If he’d need anything he didn’t have at home—he took out his phone to check a how-to, and found it dead. Excellent.

Sayid looked up, scowling, and made the mistake of making eye contact with a stranger.

He looked away hurriedly, back at his blank phone screen, and tapped at it in a furious fascimile of business.

When he looked up, the stranger he’d looked at was closer. What was it going to be this time? Were they going to ask him to ‘go home’? Tell him about another deity he had no interest in? He could feel himself tensing. And today had been going _so_ well, too.

_Impressive._

Sayid looked up, terrified. Who’d— _how’d—_ that had been inside his _head—_

The stranger was short, wrapped head to toe in bandages, and dressed in a faded tunic and cargo shorts. The eyes that looked at him were ice-cube grey. He stared back, making a mental note to schedule a doctor’s appointment; anaemia was one thing, _hallucinations_ were another. His sister had been dead for many years.

_That’s not going to work on me._

It was the stranger speaking. He was sure of it. It defied logic, since there were bandages over where her mouth ought to be. She was speaking words straight into his-- he was going to schedule that appointment for _tomorrow,_ because surely this was how people lost their minds.

 _So stubborn! I wondered where I was. This didn’t look like the Fade at all._ The voice was high, feminine, almost musical. _I see why He brought you here._

Sayid stared, frozen in place, as the bandages unraveled and fell to the ground, revealed skin scarred and twisted by still-infected burns. This wasn’t Amirah. They’d never let it _fester_ like this—

“Who _did_ this to you?” he choked out, feeling nauseated.

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. It looked like she’d been expecting something, and that his reaction had _not_ been it. _Perhaps I_ should _let Him find you. I suppose a few more Ages of chaos wouldn’t hurt Thedas. Much._

Sayid realised that moment, with stunning clarity, that he did _not_ want to be found. By whom? Did it even matter? Part of him wondered if he was still lying on the pavement, out cold.

_Too bad I already had plans. Don’t disappoint me._

The stranger moved forward. Her tunic was suddenly a smoke-blackened gown, and there was a _knife_ in her hand, dripping with gore.

She flicked the blood at him, and he could _taste_ it, but before he could drop his bags and will his legs to move (run!) she’d pushed him back into oncoming traffic.

Except his head didn’t hit asphalt. He found himself upright, staggering back through wooden doors into—

“Okay, what the fuck?”

This was too much, even for a _hallucination._ It looked like something he’d find Amirah playing, and that might be where it had come from, but it felt entirely too real for a figment of his imagination. He’d stumbled into a large stone hall of some sort, and a fall-themed scarecrow creature had the Pope suspended in the air—

They both turned to look at him. The Pope took the opportunity to smack the scarecrow. A small glowing ball flew towards Sayid, landing at his feet.

Sayid picked it up and regretted it _immediately._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andraste _was_ burned alive, wasn't she? (The cargo shorts are entirely my fault.)


	2. The Wake-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sayid Earthsplains. It goes about as well as you might expect

Sayid woke in a small room. His hands were restrained by a pair of crude shackles, and he was on his knees in the dirt. It was an uncomfortable and unnerving way to wake up, and he struggled for a bit before his eyes focused on his _hand—_

 _Why_ was it _glowing?_ There was a green radiance coming from his left palm, but twisting his wrist in the shackles proved more painful than he could bear, and the hand refused to open fully. Was it broken? It didn’t feel broken. He could probably live without his left hand, but he didn’t want to think about it.

“And you’ve already made a mess of things,” said someone, and Sayid looked up around to see the burned stranger, crouching over him. She was still in her charred gown, and there was blood dripping from a raw-looking twist of skin under one eye. It hadn’t been bleeding the last time.

Where to begin? He tried to say something, but all that came out was “Blood.”

The stranger ignored him. “I had high hopes for you, you realise. One of those glass towers would have done beautifully… down on the priest’s head. Like a bug.” She stared at him with a compelling intensity. “Or is it that you don’t know how?”

“Know _what,”_ croaked Sayid.

The stranger’s scarred face twisted into something angry, frustrated, _terrifying._ She opened her mouth to speak, or maybe scream, her jaw distending like some kind of snake’s, but then the door to the small room banged open and the stranger disappeared like ink off a whiteboard.

The room was full of blinding light, and two people entered the room. High-budget LARPers if he trusted his common sense, but that didn’t seem to count for much right now.

“Tell us one reason why we shouldn’t kill you now,” said the one in heavier armour. She scowled at him like she’d like to grind him to dust underfoot. Sayid scowled right back.

“Careful, Cassandra, we need him,” said the second, a redhead in a hood. She sounded vaguely French.

“I doubt it,” said Sayid, still frowning. Why did they look so surprised when he spoke? He was probably going against their script. “So if you’d just unlock these, thanks—”

The armoured woman, Cassandra, leaned forward. “This is no _joke._ The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is _dead,_ except for you.”

Sayid’s scowl deepened. “That makes no sense to me.”

The redhead pursed her lips; Cassandra reached forward and grabbed the glowing hand. It hurt worse than anything Sayid could remember, and he locked the muscles in his shoulder and let himself be dragged forward instead. “Is that so?” She shook him _hard_ by the bar in his shackles, and he yelled. “Explain _this.”_

“I don’t know what it is, either!” shouted Sayid, cradling his hand close to his chest and curling over it. Stabs of pain traveled down his forearm with every heartbeat.

She took a step forward, and he flinched and made to crawl back, but the redhead stopped her with a gesture. _Good to know._ “What do you remember of what happened?”

“This burned bitch cut me. And pushed me into moving traffic. I don’t know how I got here.”

The redhead looked at him for a long moment before turning away. Cassandra pulled him up by the good arm. “Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I’ll take him to the rift.”

“I’d prefer the bus stop,” said Sayid, voice reedy, but he ducked his head when Cassandra glared at him. He’d keep quiet as long as she didn’t touch his glowing hand, or the arm attached to it. Getting to his feet made his head spin a bit, but a cold metal hand on his shoulder kept him upright.

It also pushed him out of the room. The albedo blinded him for a good few seconds.

“We call it the Breach,” said Cassandra, behind him. “It’s a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour. It’s not the only such rift, just the largest.” She met Sayid’s disgusted look head-on. “All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

“It’s called _pollution,”_ said Sayid, drawing out the words. It certainly was an unusual cloud of dust, and it refracted the sunlight in a strange and unnerving way, but to call it a _portal to hell_ was another thing. “Explosions do that.”

“Not all explosions create rifts that grow like this,” said Cassandra, visibly irritated. “If we do not act, the Breach may grow until it swallows the world.”

Sayid was allowed a whole second of feeling superior before the glow in his palm flared. He screamed; it felt like his arm was being _ripped in two_ from the hand up, like nothing he’d ever felt before. He would have fallen if Cassandra hadn’t been holding him up. He was breathing hard when the pain passed, and his cheeks were wet.

Cassandra looked gravely at him. “Each time the Breach expands, your Mark spreads, and it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this but there isn’t much time.”

Sayid looked up, and the cloud had grown. The centre of it was darker than before. Pulses of light—lightning? Something else?—moved deep in the mass of the cloud, and it mirrored the ebb and flare of the glow in his palm.

He felt close to tears. “What do you want?”

Cassandra wordlessly pulled him through what looked like a rural village. Sayid kept his head down and tried not to listen to what the players were muttering. Frozen dirt road. Cheap-looking shoes. He could smell something foetid, like open sewers in the summer.

“They have decided your guilt,” said Cassandra. “They need it. The people of Haven mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia, head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for peace between mages and templars. She bought their leaders together! Now they are dead.”

“Do you even _hear_ yourself?” asked Sayid, and he hated how his voice was thick with tears.

“We lash out, like the sky.” The words came through gritted teeth. “But we must think beyond ourselves, as she did. Until the Breach is sealed.” She took out a set of keys and unlocked his shackles. Sayid hugged his arms to his chest as soon as they were released. His wrists were chafed and red, and there were rust stains on the cuffs of his shirt. “Come. It is not far.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“There will be a trial. Your Mark must be tested on something smaller than the Breach.”

**Author's Note:**

> Andraste _was_ burned alive, wasn't she? (The cargo shorts are entirely my fault.)


End file.
